IPv6 addresses on a Windows machine include a link-local address, a globally unique address, a temporary address for privacy, and corresponding default gateway entries, all visible through the ipconfig command. Each address type serves a distinct role in network communication and device identification.
IPv6 on Windows
Here's a quick demo on what IP version 6 addresses look like on a Windows machine.
What I'm going to do to view this is click the Windows button here, type in CMD and hit enter. This is going to bring up a command prompt. I'm just going to make it a little bit smaller here, and to view the IP addresses on this machine I can type in ipconfig, and it's going to show me all of the IP addresses on this machine.
We're looking specifically at this Ethernet adapter right here, not the Wi-Fi or any of the other ones. As far as this Ethernet adapter is concerned, we take a look at this and it gives you an IP version 6 address, a temporary IP version 6 address, a link local IP version 6 address, an IP version 4 address, and a default gateway — both an IP version 6 and an IP version 4 address for the default gateway.
So how does it come up with this? First of all, this link local is something that's necessary on any IP version 6 enabled interface. If it is up and running and it's an IP version 6 interface, then what it needs is this link local address. It starts with fe80 and comes up with the rest of this, that's locally unique on there. What that allows it to do is start communicating right away, so now it can communicate on its local network via this link local address.
Another thing that it needs to do is it needs to know what network it's on, and what is the router, what is the default gateway. So it sends out what's called a router solicitation and gets a router advertisement back. Essentially it says, who's the routers on there, and it gets back information from the router, so now it knows the default gateway from that. It gets back this from the default gateway, and this also is a link local address — it's an fe80 address, and this is specific to the default gateway of this network.
From there it also understands what its network is, so it will get some information from this. It's actually called SLAAC, and we'll get much more into it, but it gets information from this auto configuration called SLAAC. So from there it gets the network that it's on, which is right here — the network that this is on, FC 00 colon 1 colon one0 colon 0. So that's the network that this machine is on, and then it can configure the host bits part of this.
It autoconfigures the host bits part of this, and it does it for two different addresses. It does it for this IP version 6 address, and that's just your globally unique address that it can get out to the outside world with. But Windows does this temporary IP version 6 address as well.
Why they have created the temporary one is so that way they have this address that can be changed now and then, and it's still globally unique so it can get to the outside world, but it creates a little bit of anonymity. If you just use the same IP version 6 address all the time, then people would start associating wherever you go — it could be associated to your device. By changing it up now and then, you create some obscurity where people can't necessarily track all of the sites that you've been to and where you're going to. So it just creates a little bit of obfuscation there, and from a security standpoint that could be important.
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